The invention relates generally to transaction processing systems and to methods for generating such systems.
Embodiments of the invention relates in particular to transaction processing in environments in which there are very high volumes of transactions, such as for financial institutions. In such environments, there have traditionally been large mainframe back office systems which are generally very efficient at processing fixed length data fields and messages for transaction processing. Typically, these mainframe systems are connected to terminals in financial institution branches or other offices.
However, in recent years there has been an increasing requirement for ever more powerful front-end processing because there is a need to provide a large range of financial products is a versatile manner. These products include insurance services, life assurance services, and a wide range of different types of loan products and credit card processing services.
One solution to this problem is to provide a powerful distributed system in which processors and workstations are interconnected in a high-speed network. However, this is often not feasible because complete transfer over from the original host system is not practical, and in any event the highly efficient nature of the processing which is carried out by the host system is still required.
It is an object of the invention to provide a transaction control system to provide the front-end processing capacity required in such transaction processing environments, without sacrificing back-office processing efficiency.
Another object is to provide a method for developing transaction processing modules in a quick and versatile manner.